Neanderpundit

I was contemplating the purchase of a new hard drive to replace the nearly-full one in the home desktop. I defraggted etc. and no dice. Someone suggested i might turn off “system restore” and I thought, I don’t have it on. But Win did. I turned it off, and HALF OF THE FUCKING HARD DRIVE IS NOW FREE.

I hate computers, I sincerely do.

M Alger with his usual aplomb gets it so right that I cannot add to it in any way

Go. Read the wholw thing.

Now, I have to say, nothing could nail the subject down harder and more solidly.

For years plantation owners made their living (ostensibly) on the backs of slave laborers- though the idea that this was anything other than business was asinine. Those plantation owners were buying machinery, and that’s all they thought of it, period.

Now, we’re all wage slaves, working for an ever decreasing bite of the labor of our own hands and minds. And no abolitionists are coming our way to liberate us. And at no point will we ever vote our way clear of our slavery. At best the taxes we pay are golden handcuffs, at worst, iron stocks.

Anymore, anyway.

I do remember clearly the moment when I cracked open the tape on the box containing my very first computer, an Apple 2E. I remember playing the simple games that came with it, I remember typing thousands of words using the very crude word processor. I remember using the word/mailmerge/etc pretty much at it’s capacity, straining the software at it’s very seams to do the things I needed done.

These days, I rarely find a feature missing in a piece of software; if I want to do something, chances are that some geek in an office three thousand miles away has already planned for my need.

Most of what I do cannot be done on an Apple, the better engineering software etc. is written for PC only, and most of the software used to communicate with machine tools, PLC’s, etc. is written exclusively for PC.

If, on the other hand, all I ever did with a computer was surf, type, look at pictures and video, I’d be getting an apple. The Imac is rocketship fast for what it does, and for 90% of the population, is the best computer they can buy. The UNIX based OS is what the platform lacked from the beginning, and now it has it.

I’m not a fanboi of either platform. They’re tools. Use the one that works for you. Frankly, the day I have adequate wealth to allow me never to touch an electronic device again will be the happiest day of my life.